TY - JOUR T1 - Study of brain morphology change in Alzheimer’s disease and amnestic mild cognitive impairment compared with normal controls JF - General Psychiatry JO - Gen Psych DO - 10.1136/gpsych-2018-100005 VL - 32 IS - 2 SP - e100005 AU - Huanqing Yang AU - Hua Xu AU - Qingfeng Li AU - Yan Jin AU - Weixiong Jiang AU - Jinghua Wang AU - Yina Wu AU - Wei Li AU - Cece Yang AU - Xia Li AU - Shifu Xiao AU - Feng Shi AU - Tao Wang Y1 - 2019/04/01 UR - http://gpsych.bmj.com/content/32/2/e100005.abstract N2 - Background With an aggravated social ageing level, the number of patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is gradually increasing, and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is considered to be an early form of Alzheimer’s disease. How to distinguish diseases in the early stage for the purposes of early diagnosis and treatment is an important topic.Aims The purpose of our study was to investigate the differences in brain cortical thickness and surface area among elderly patients with AD, elderly patients with amnestic MCI (aMCI) and normal controls (NC).Methods 20 AD patients, 21 aMCIs and 25 NC were recruited in the study. FreeSurfer software was used to calculate cortical thickness and surface area among groups.Results The patients with AD had less cortical thickness both in the left and right hemisphere in 17 of the 36 brain regions examined than the patients with aMCI or NC. The patients with AD also had smaller cerebral surface area both in the left and right hemisphere in 3 of the 36 brain regions examined than the patients with aMCI or NC. Compared with the NC, the patients with aMCI only had slight atrophy in the inferior parietal lobe of the left hemisphere, and no significant difference was found.Conclusion AD, as well as aMCI (to a lesser extent), is associated with reduced cortical thickness and surface area in a few brain regions associated with cognitive impairment. These results suggest that cortical thickness and surface area could be used for early detection of AD. ER -